He was at this time, like a man jostled and pushed and turned about at some riotous fair; looking, now this way, now that, absorbed by a thousand sights, a thousand sounds—and always through it all feeling, bitterly in his heart, that something dear to him, somewhere in some place of silence, was dying—
Well, hang it all, at any rate there was the Child!
II
At any rate there was the Child!
And what a child! Did any one ever have a baby like it, so fat and round and white, with its head already covered with faint golden silk, its eyes grey and wondering—with its sudden gravities, its amazing joys and terrific humour, the beauty of its stepping away, as it did, suddenly without any warning, behind a myriad mists and curtains, into some other land that it knew of. How amazing to watch it as it slowly forgot all the things that it had come into the world remembering, as it slowly realised all the laws that this new order of things demanded of its obedience. Could any one who had been present ever forget its crow of ecstasy at the first shaft of sunlight that it ever beheld, at its first realisation of the blue, shining ball that Peter bought, at its first vision, through the window, of falling snow!
Peter was drunk with this amazing wonder. All the facts of life—even Clare and his work—faded before this new presence for whose existence he had been responsible. It had been one of the astonishing things about Clare that she had taken the child so quietly. He had seen her thrilled by musical comedy, by a dance at the Palace Music Hall, by the trumpery pathos of a tenth-rate novel—before this marvel she stood, it seemed to him, without any emotion.
Sometimes he thought that if it had not been for his reminder she would not have gone to kiss the child goodnight. There were many occasions when he knew—with wonder and almost dismay—that she was afraid of it; and once, when they had been in the nursery together and young Stephen had cried and kicked his heels in a tempest of rage, she had seemed almost to cling to Peter for protection.
There were occasions when Peter fancied that the baby seemed the elder of the two, it was at any rate certain that Stephen Westcott was not so afraid of his mother as his mother was of him. And yet, Peter fancied, that could Clare only get past this strange nervous fear she would love the baby passionately—would love him with that same fierceness of passion that she flung, curiously, now and again upon Peter himself. “Let me be promised,” she seemed to say, “that I will never have any trouble or sorrow with my son and I will love him devotedly.” Meanwhile she went into every excitement that life could provide for her....
It was on a March afternoon of early Spring after a lonely tea (Clare was out at one of her parties) that Peter went up to the nursery. He had just finished reading the second novel by that Mr. Rondel whose Violet sensation had occurred some two years before. This second book was good—there was no doubt about it—and Peter was ashamed of a kind of dim reluctance in his acknowledgment of its quality. The fellow had had such reviews; the book, although less sensational than its predecessor had hit the public straight in the middle of its susceptible heart. Had young Rondel done it all with bad work-well, that was common enough—but the book was good, uncommonly good.
He sent the nurse downstairs and began to build an elaborate fortress on the nursery floor. The baby lay on his back on a rug by the fire and contemplated his woollen shoe which he slowly dragged off and disdainfully flung away. Then, crowing to himself, he watched his father and the world in general.